I feel the night explode.

Taylor Dayne - "Tell It to My Heart"

Walk with me now through lush meadows filled with forever-blooming flowers of melody, poetry, and dance. The name of this particular meadow? Taylor Dayne Meadow.

NOTE: Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult.

00:01 - "The eyes are the windows of the house of the soul," say the poets. This eye is a window that opens to show us into the living room of the house inside, where the most incredible feelings are hosting the most incredible party, with streamers and music and punch, and all of it is on fire.

00:03 - Only the most confident videos can afford to release the backflipping backup dancer visual (usually the coup de grace) a mere three seconds in. Only the most confident videos can afford to say, "We see the horizon, and we are sailing right over it."

00:15 - At fifteen seconds, you may notice the first subtle theme of the video: red. Go back with that word in mind, and you'll start to pick up the clues. Red lipstick, red nail polish, red paint, red underwear peeking through slashed jeans, red socks. Finally, a set of red footprints following a pair of mysterious feet. Why is there only one set of footprints? Because that's when I was carrying you.

00:22 - First line: "I feel the night explode when we're together." The imagery is potent; at first, we are afraid that so much is literally exploding that the entire night is in danger (and we of course hear the echo of Milton's anthropomorphic Night speaking to Satan in Paradise Lost here), but then the verb "feel" catches up to us. The unshuttered eye, the concatenation of red: these are all the vestiges of feelings. Exploding feelings.

00:24 - The first synthesizer fill aurally titillates us with its brief melody while the man in the slashed jeans dances. If you can call that dancing. It's more like a kinesthetic explosion. (Notice the second motif that is already developing: exploding.)

00:30 - The best stage actors know to enunciate powerfully, and so does Taylor Dayne. Watch her mouth form those elongated "o" sounds in the few seconds before the half-minute mark. Sensuality like that could only be matched by suggestive shoulder rolls; fortunately, we have those here, too.

00:33 - Held in reserve until this moment, the second backup dancer cartwheels into frame. Now we have two of the three primary colors struggling to burst forth from slashed jeans.

00:34-00:44 - These ten seconds split our attention between the enunciated, emotional power in the front and the gesticulations of the men in the back. Focus on the men. Each motion clarifies the lyrics like a resonant bell rung high in a church tower, perhaps by a quasi-formed but tender-hearted man.

00:47 - With one heart-wrenching, "Tonight, I really need to know," we prepare to hit the chorus; also, her jacket vanishes to allow Dayne's delicately tousled locks to spill over her shoulders.

00:47 - Please don't forget to watch the men in the back. They are wearing expressions of such focus, such stoic commitment, that they can't help but underscore the pathos of the lyrics.

00:51 - Yes! The chorus! If I can be permitted a bardic aside, I'm nearly giddy with the thrill of it all. When Taylor Dayne and the back-up dancers punch the air in perfect unison, they are punching me in the heart.

Take a second to digest the lyrics of the chorus:

Tell it to my heart
Tell my I'm the only one
Is this really love or just a game
Tell it to my heart
I can feel my body rock
Every time you call my name

Some might argue that these lyrics are cliched, echoing with the same trite longing of any pop song. To a point, that is true. Yet it is that very same cliche, knowingly employed here, that provides the appropriate backdrop to the exploding punch of this line: "I can feel my body rock." The image evokes obviously the idea of movement, but the physical orgasm is matched by a spiritual one: like Peter, she is building her house on a rock. And I am moving in to the spare bedroom.

1:03-1:06 - Watch the dancer on the left. Nureyev is reborn. Unless he isn't dead yet. Then he is merely replaced.

1:15-1:21 - At what are the dancers pointing? Maybe a star. Maybe the future.

1:26 - Here the lyrics help literalize the song's message; "soul to soul," we hold on to Taylor Dayne's waist, gracefully kicking behind us.

1:39 - In the second chorus, she begins to plumb even greater emotional depths, becoming fiercer and fiercer in her lamentations.

1:55 - There is a single frame at this point that is not part of the movement of the rest of this sequence. In that single frame, the "red" dancer is striking a lounging, half-kick pose. Like the single frames cut into the original theatrical release of The Exorcist, this may be a subliminal message designed to augment the rest. Here, the visceral target is not fear but the confluence of passion and sorrow.

1:56 - 2:06 - For ten seconds, Taylor Dayne gives way so that the music can stretch its legs. While the synthesizer is being teased into unheard of melodies, Taylor Dayne walks purposefully toward the camera, eyes seeming to reach out from her anachronistic haunt and into our own...

2:07 - And then she whirls around, leaving us spurned and gasping. Freeze the video at 2:08; that sneer speaks more loudly than any lyric could have.

2:13 - 2:32 - During the bridge, notice two things. First, Taylor Dayne's jacket once again appears and disappears in an almost rhythmic cycle. Second, the back-up dancers are doing the same move for twenty seconds. Are they attempting to suggest the Sisyphean machinery of love? The way we throw ourselves again and again into the fire, hoping for new results?

2:29 - "We keep holding on." The last word is transformed into a wail informed by a grief not felt since Juliet awakened to find Romeo dead at her side.

2:30 - 2:57 - The motifs of this passion play return now, and we again see the over-magnified eyes, the painted footprints, the gesticulating. Not content to revisit old ground, Taylor Dayne spins into frame like single images from a beautiful kaleidoscope, repetitive but mesmerizing.

2:57 - The dancers die.

3:03 - The dancers return to life with a jolly spin and hip wiggle.

3:37 - Up to this point, the ending of the song is a frenzy. Taylor Dayne alternatingly smiles and scowls, torn by the emotions of the song, and the back-up dancers can only dance as hard as possible to console her. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the dancing stops. The trio turns and walks into the white background. The image begins to fade.

And we are left only with our memories of ineffable heartache.

Fin